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Forests Around Chernobyl Aren't Decaying Properly
An anonymous reader writes "Smithsonian Magazine has an article about one of the non-obvious effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown: dead organisms are not decomposing correctly. 'According to a new study (abstract) published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.' The scientists took bags of fallen leaves to various areas around Chernobyl and found that locations with more radiation caused the leaves to retain more than half of their original weight after almost a year. They're now beginning to worry that almost three decades of dead brush buildup is contributing to the area's fire risk, and a large fire could distribute radioactive material beyond Chernobyl's exclusion zone."
SF authors were right!
Ezekiel 23:20
Go to other areas of Europe and Russia that have normal forest breakdown, grab some soil and dead leaves and spread them in select locations around Chernobyl. If the fungi and mold was damaged back when the radiation was really high it can be reseeded now that it's lower
Sounds like the perfect place to sell burial plots to the rich. Their corpses can remain intact for thousands of years. And the fear of radiation poisoning will keep grave robbers away. As a bonus, it will save more land from being developed into wasted space. And this land that can't be used by the living will become useful as well. Sounds like a win-win to me.
I think they meant the smoke alone from the fire would cause radiation to spread.
The fire "risk" is natures form of healing. By re-distributing the radiation the area can heal.
We humans take issue with the idea of the radiation spreading outside "the zone" but nature doesn't.
I think they meant the smoke alone from the fire would cause radiation to spread.
Oh come on, get a half-life already!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
You can't wish radioactive particles to "be gone". They do have a half-life, but for example the Ce-137 that's depicted in my link has a half-life of ~30 years. And it's spewed continuously into the ocean and spread around the world. The Bikini Atoll experiments resulted in sea-life in general being hundreds of times more radioactive than the norm because those elements, and guess where that radioactivity ended up - on people's tables. Saying it's safe to swim around the sunken ships is interesting to say the least. My point is that radioactive particles don't just "go away" and their generation can overwhelm the moderating capabilities (i.e. dilution) of the sea water. And it isn't reasonable to think that having radioactive material being spewed into the ocean like that is all-right.
"The results were telling. In the areas with no radiation, 70 to 90 percent of the leaves were gone after a year. But in places where more radiation was present, the leaves retained around 60 percent of their original weight."
Areas with no radiation presently showed decomposition (70-90% reduction in weight).
Areas with radiation presently showed decomposition (40% reduction in weight).
So, yes, it seems like it would help. A 40% reduction is better than 0%.
Look, I don't want to ruin your cynical train, but the study looks plausible, as in "common sense" plausible. Even if it, of course, needs to be double-checked, there is no reason to "disbelieve" it without giving it the attention it deserves.
What is triggering your "disbelief" alert here? Radioactive material enter the ecosystem via the trees. Trees die, their leaves fall every autumn. Radioactive material goes back to the ground, causes problem with fauna and fungi. Living organisms are known to be able to cope with radioactivity, but at the price of some energy expense to fight mutations (in higher organisms, tumors), which mean they can't spend as much energy as usual to do what they usually do, that is decompose organic matter and generate nutrients back into the cycle of life.
And of course, if a fire starts, all the radioactive material contained into flammable materials (leaves and tree remnants) will soar into the sky, since the decay of the said flammable materials take longer than usual... This again seems plausible.
When the Soviets contaminated over 800 square kilometers with high levels of Strontium 90 in their first big nuclear disaster, post Lysenko geneticists and biologists studied the effects of this radiation on the entire biocoenosis. Z. A. Medvedev wrote about the results of this work in his book, Nuclear Disaster in the Urals (ch.8):
The given contamination levels (1.8-3.4 millicuries per square meter) were highly destructive for soil animals. Predatory beetles suffered least; their numbers in the contaminated area were reduced to only 66 percent of the figure in the control area. Non-predatory beetles, beetle larvae, and other insects that feed on plants (phytophaga) suffered the most; their numbers fell to 56 percent of those in the control area. Soil animals that feed on organic products in the soil (where the highest level of strontium concentration was found)—the saprophages—died out almost completely; their numbers fell to 1 percent of the control group. Taxonomically, the groups studied were Aranea, Mollusca, Lithoblidae, Geophilidae, Lumbricidae, and Diplopoda.
So small critters in the soil that eat leaves are highly sensitive to radioactive contamination. This has been known for a long time now; at least 40 years. Your skepticism is misplaced; that Chernobyl should have caused a big die-out among the creatures the decompose detritus is entirely predictable. Wait a few years and you'll get to read about the same thing around Fukushima, only there we'll learn about the effects on marine life as well.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Incorrect. Microbes came (long!) before plants, include microbes capable of breaking down each other.
As I understand it, coal essentially came from peat bogs, where decomposition is largely halted. Outside of those peat bogs, decomposition would have run apace.
Speaking of "no, idiot", sunlight IS radiation.
As anyone who has ever had a sunburn knows, it's damaging radiation. Quite a bit more damaging than any radiation anyone has ever received from. US nuclear power plant, in fact.
For Fukushima you're talking about a far smaller dose.
That's not the case. The total radiation released by Fukushima Daiichi is far smaller than Mayak or Chernobyl, but there are concentrations of radiation (from Cs-137 and Cs-134) as high as 30M Bq/m2 in the several kilometers of land Northwest of Fukushima Daiichi. This is equivalent 0.8 millicuries which puts it into the ballpark of the Urals EURT areas of 1.8-3.4 millicuries that were studied by the Soviets; high enough to measurably effect the life cycle of saprophage.
Only one problem, during the terrorist attack the entire building was destroyed by a volcano.
The land around Fukushima Daiichi does not fit your terrorist+volcano analogy. The land and around the plant is foothills and the water did not get far inland. The plant itself was build only after the site had been graded to within ~10m of sea level (which is probably the single biggest mistake implicated in the whole event.) So the surface fallout may be studied just fine.
The sea around Fukushima Daiichi may also be meaningfully studied despite the tsunami. One need only establish control areas that are similar to the Fukushima Daiichi area but well away; kilometers or tens of kilometers north and south of the plant and relatively free of radioactive contaminants. Post tsunami recovery of organisms may then be studied and comparisons between Fukushima Daiichi and these control areas can be made.
FYI: this work has been started and is ongoing. Unlike the Soviet case we won't have to wait decades for the cover-up to finally fail and the results to appear, either. Japanese and Western researchers are eager to publish about Fukushima Daiichi.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!